These 7 Signs Tell You It’s Time to Update Your Website

Web trends are dynamic.They are constantly changing with new advancements in technology and design. It is in every digital marketer’s best interest to stay in the loop when it comes to changing trends and adapt accordingly. As the saying goes, “If you do not take change by the hand, it will take you by the neck.” The following are the common signs that you may want to consider updating your website.

Mobile Friendliness of Your Web Design

A mobile-friendly web design is slowly becoming a necessity for any business that wants to survive the cut-throat competition of online businesses and rank higher in search engine results. In April 2015, Google released a new algorithm that boosts the rankings of sites featuring a mobile responsive design while docking the mobile page rankings for businesses or sites that do not have the revolutionary mobile responsive web design.

Based on these developments, it is vital for any business or institution to have a mobile-friendly website. It is common knowledge that most folks who scour the net for products or services, do it via their smartphones. In fact, as per the Pew Research Center findings, a whopping 64% of American adults possess a smartphone, and that percentage continues to grow as time goes by. It is through these smartphones that people access the internet most often. That can be clearly seen in the findings of another study that found mobile digital media time is 51% compared to desktop media time which is only 42%.

Low Conversions

It is important to check the analytics often so as to gauge the rate of conversions. It does not matter that you are getting a lot of traffic- if visitors are not converting by purchasing or generating leads, etc. then you have not accomplished your goal as a marketer. Therefore, you’ll need to sit down and find out why site visitors are not converting, and one of the reasons is that the web design is outdated or it is not user-friendly and, therefore, cannot allow the visitors to use it intuitively. That is a definite sign you need to upgrade your site.

High Bounce Rates

People expect ready answers and ease of navigation when they search the web. Without this, visitors will quickly develop the wrong impression of your website, especially when they can’t easily and quickly find what they are looking for. This will most certainly increase the bounce rates. If bounce rates are high, then it is time to upgrade your website.

Site Loading Slowly

One of the clearest indicators that you need to redesign or upgrade your site is slow load times. Slow load times can be as a result of an accumulation of too many plugins, or that you are using outdated technology. 47% of consumers expect a website to load in 2 seconds, and if the site takes more than 3 seconds to load, 40% of the visitors will leave.

Obsolete Technology

If your site is using obsolete technology, then you are likely missing out on a lot. For instance, there are some sites that still use flash, but flash is obsolete. Mobile devices such as iPads and iPhones no longer support flash. Besides, search engines can’t read it. That implies Bing, Yahoo, and Google are not indexing all the pages on your website. Thus, your site can’t show up in search results and, therefore, new customers can’t find your business. It is imperative, then, you ensure your site is employing the latest technology.

Difficulty or Impossibility of Updating your Website

If you realize that a lot of these points apply to your website, it may be easier to hire a web designer like LightHouse Graphics to completely redesign your entire website. This will give you an opportunity to bring everything, including your design, up to date and make your site competitive with all of the other sites out there.

Does the Website Look Outdated?

If your website looks outdated from the word go, then it is likely outdated in reality. That means that users aren’t going to have the best experience, and will develop a wrong impression of your business. If your website design looks outdated, visitors may think the page has been abandoned and will likely take their business elsewhere. Just something to consider.

A well-kept, up to date web site not only performs well on search engines but also appeals visually and esthetically to potential customers. Making the investment in updating your website could very well be the boost your business has needed.